Published on 12, July, 2020
I want to be loved. I want my feelings to be validated. I want to understand the world. I want to read people's minds.
I have left my therapy recently. Well, I felt misunderstood at times. In one occasion, after a stressful session where I was really distressed, my therapist was whistling happily in the kitchen before I leave the place. I thought it was very insensitive of her. I have been anxious and frozen in few sessions and we couldn't change or improve the situation very much. She seemed confused about what was going on with me. I left those sessions blaming myself for not improving a bit in breaking the anxiety cycle or learning how to deal with it. I couldn't talk about how I felt about my self-diagnousis because I was afraid of being unbelieved. There were some questions she asked that I didn't understand. Her questions made me doubt myself. I can't tell if she did that intentionally.
I can't get the situation out of my mind. It feels like a breakup with all the feelings of anger, sadness and relief. I can't stop rethinking her intentions and my decision. There are some other things about her that I found "cool" and the fact that she's older=wiser and more knowledgeable made me ignore how I felt. I still think to myself "is it me or was really happening?". For some silly reason, I think that a cool person (progressive ideology) can't be wrong, it must be me who was wrong!.. also, the isolation that I live in makes therapists almost the only person to know the real feelings that I have. This makes them more special to me while I'm just one more client to them.. I have an experience of falling in love with one therapist before. I tend to fall in love with people who can't love me back. Thank you guys for reading.. I don't think that I could have shared this anywhere else..
I've never been able to get along with therapy. I spend a few weeks telling the therapist absolutely everything that's on my mind and after a few weeks they start saying things like "I think we've gone as far as we can" or "maybe you'll never be ready to open up," usually right around the one where I think "great, I've told them absolutely everything going on with me, maybe we can start the actual therapy part now?"
They often seem confused and often try to ascribe thoughts to me that I don't have. E.g. assuming that I feel anxious in crowded places because of low self-esteem, rather than because I'm scared of being trapped in sensory hell or not being able to meet my basic needs of food/rest/shelter/toilet/water etc.
I've found typed therapy (through Qwell.io) marginally more helpful, as obviously typing and reading is a lot faster than speaking and listening, so at least I can get all the information across within a time limited session, and it's easier to understand what they're saying back without having to focus on doing the "noise to words" translation necessary with spoken English. You only get a few sessions though, and I haven't found any private providers willing to do typed therapy.
I don't know what the therapy secret is. It feels like there's some way you're supposed to interact with it that isn't just being open and honest, but no one has told me what that is.
I haven't managed to find an autistic therapist, but I wonder if that would be better? I did try an autistic coach but he just talked about himself and I couldn't get a word in edgewise.
I find many things about therapy don't suit me. The time limit for example, I'm a very slow processor of words and discussions and the time ticking just pressures me to process quicker and usually it has the opposite effect. Second is the fact that we sit face to face and all attention is on me, the therapist is looking at me for full 50 minutes! It creates anxiety. The fact that I pay them for what they do, as I mentioned before, makes me question the authenticity of their words and actions with me. I wonder, for example, if the therapist knows about my needs and thinks that we are a good match or if just keeping me there for the paycheck? And stuff like that. I realise on the other hand that those rules are necessary, specially the money one, although none of them really suits me, they seem present in all therapies. On the other hand, even tho I delt with all those difficulties, I still thought that the outcome of the therapies that I've done was generally positive.
Sadly the time limit rule is necessary, but I can see how that would be stressful with processing time. Some therapists might offer typed therapy though, as HP35 has described above - what are your thoughts on that? That would also relieve the stress connected with sitting face-to-face. If you prefer a spoken medium, do you think online therapy could work for you? If you find an autistic therapist they might feel similarly about eye contact and some might let you have your camera off. I'm blind and hoping to train as a therapast, so very much hope seeing the client isn't absolutely necessary.
And I can relate to the money thing, I've wondered about that in the past and struggled with thinking, 'But they wouldn't spend time with me if it wasn't for the money' etc. Finding someone you really trust and can explore a deep therapeutic relationship with can really help move towards alleviating that, in my experience.
Interesting, thank you for sharing. Seems like a bit of a ‘rare breed.’